


The Oxford Album

by thunderbird_dragon



Category: Thunderbirds, thunderbirds TOS, thunderbirds are go
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 19:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14479848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderbird_dragon/pseuds/thunderbird_dragon
Summary: Why does the Hood hate the Tracys so very much.?Could it be that Jeff Tracy and the Hood aka Bela Gaat knew each other earlier in their lives?





	The Oxford Album

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of fun with this, especially with the idea of these two being young.  
> Haha, the Hood with hair!!!  
> When it came to the illustration I actually had to resort to tracing a photo of the Hood because my first attempts freehand didn't look like him!  
> I chose to use the name Bel for the Hood from cannon choices of Trangh Belagant (movie) and Bela Gaat (Comics).

  

                                           

 

 

The Oxford photo album was a dark red leather-bound volume in the Tracy's treasured library of family history.  Less thumbed possibly than others, such as those where the boys could find photos of their parents with them, happy holidays, prize winnings and birthdays.  But the album did, however, hold photos of Jeff and Lucille, tentatively together for the first time during their short spell at Oxford University, along with much younger photos of John's longer stay twenty years later and Scott's too. Though somehow, this album was seldom opened.

Yet, something within it had been troubling Grandma for a long, long time.

She opened it at the same place that she always did, a single photo of happy young students, captured in a split second smiling at the camera in unison. Four girls and seven boys.

Her finger lingered over the head of one, her Jeff. Oh, he looked so handsome, a grin from ear to ear, carefree, his whole adventurous life ahead of him.

She smiled.

Her eyes next scanned the other faces.

Of the girls, she could only name one. The important one – Lucille, her auburn hair catching the light, the laughter in her amber coloured eyes. Oh, she was such a beauty too.

Of the boys, she could name Nirous, Jeff's Nasa friend, Eddie the actor who went on to star in that movie she liked and 'Nasher', the boy who would eat everything... All good friends of Jeff's.

But it was the name of the pretty boy with the dark luxurious hair and beautiful eyes, his arm draped ever-so-slightly possessively over Lucille's narrow shoulders, that eluded Grandma.

If she knew it, she couldn't recall it now.

Jeff spoke little about those days but Grandma thought she could see something in that face now, something more recently was haunting her constantly.

But it was all too late to ask Jeff and Lucille.

 

 

Jeff slid in to sit beside Lucille and playfully threw Bel's hand off from her shoulder. He grinned and wistfully Bel grinned widely back, raising one challenging eyebrow at Jeff.

Lucille was with no one's – yet!

“You don't stand a chance, my friend!” Jeff scoffed openly at him.

Lucille shook her head and lifted gracefully off the ledge she's perched on for the photo, “Neither of you do, I don't know why you're still trying!” and giggling with Nancy, they shot off over the grass to the riverside to dip their toes into the summer dappled waters down by the weeping willows.

Bel watched after her. “Oh but we do my dear, we do. You just don't know it yet!” and he grinned again towards his friend. “Well, I do, Jeff!  I'm not so sure about you!”

Jeff took a swing at him and knocked him off the ledge with a hoot of broad American laughter. “You! She wants a man not a wimp like you, pretty boy!”

Jeff stood amiably and held out a hand for the lad on the floor who took it with the same good grace and stood beside him.

Chalk and cheese.

One tall, broad, brash to a point of being loud, and who acted on what he said for himself, standing up for what was right, so sure of himself.

The other, shorter, slimmer, a quiet thinker who could argue for right and for wrong dependant on the popular view, the perfect debater at university.

How were they friends? Well, neither of them knew but for the past seven months, they had been as close as brothers. And for the past month, since the start of the Trinity term, their goal had been the same.

To get Lucille to notice them!

They had approached the task very differently.

Jeff had tried corny chat-up lines in the students' bar. She'd laughed but she'd heard them all before and to be honest, she hadn't been that impressed. He was cute, yes, she liked blondes with blue eyes, but no, he'd have to try harder than that!

Bel had tried stealth instead, leaving anonymous poetry stuck to her door and paying for her library fees before she even knew they were due. The problem with this tactic was that Lucille had many admirers interested in her and some of his 'gifts' got attributed to others.

“Aggh nothings working!” He moaned, turning away from the river, hands deep in the pockets of his smart pants.

Jeff shook his head and followed, pondering on the odd sartorial elegance of his buddy, a true university eccentric with his matching jacket and shirt, and his polished expensive shoes.

Jeff? Well. he favoured a newly bought green tee with a guitar on it and torn out jeans. He didn't know it yet but that tee would become a family heirloom that each of his sons would wear right down to the youngest – it would shrink and fade over the years but it had a lot of wear in it before the Tracys were going to be done with it.

At the bar Jeff ordered a cheap beer for himself and an Absinthe for Bel, wincing at the smell of the green spirit, and gulping down half the beer before reaching the corner table they had made their own.

“Did you finish your paper on geographics yet?” Jeff asked absently, trying not to think of the flowing auburn hair and the eyes that danced down by the riverside.

Bel only grunted, a hand lost in locks of jet black hair and his arm resting on the window sill elegantly, his mind wandering down to the river again.

“Promise me something Jeff – no matter what happens...”

Jeff looked up over the edge of his glass, lightheartedly waiting for whatever was coming next. But Bel looked serious. Whatever was coming, it obviously meant something to him so would be important to Jeff too.

“Whatever happens, we won't fall out over Lucille?”

Jeff laughed and planted a broad strong hand on the other's shoulder, “Nah, we're buddies first and foremost Bel! We'll be buddies forever and buddies don't fall out over girls.”

 

 

 


End file.
